HD video wind farm and oil well flares Colorado grasslands

With renewable wind turbines spinning in the background, combusted pollutants and heat are released into the air from hundreds of VOC or vapor combustors and gas flares across the area surrounding the Pawnee National Grasslands. Volatile organic compounds like hydrogen sulfide, gasses such as methane and other hazardous air pollutants are burned and then vented to the atmosphere. Surrounded by energy development, oil and gas storage tanks, flares and pollution emitting exhaust stacks stand along county road 127 and the road leading to the buttes. Recently the area has been greatly developed by the oil, gas and wind farm industries. Oil companies from around the nation frack the Niobrara oil shale on lands nearby and drill horizontally under the Pawnee National Grasslands.